“When it’s an emergency, we take that risk”: Biopolitical assemblages and U.S. immigrant health

• In Event: 1107 - Deportation Threats and Realities in the United States

Abstract

Contemporary U.S. health and immigration policies increasingly force Latinx immigrants into dangerous life-and-death decisions. Growing scholarship emphasizes the criminalization of Latinx immigrants and the ways in which citizenship status stratifies health chances in the U.S., but few studies capture the effects of recent policy uncertainty on immigrant health. This paper examines the case of Chapulin County (a pseudonymous “red state” county), where punitive immigration laws and restrictive health policies force Latinx immigrants through injurious obligatory passage points in U.S. medical-legal bureaucracy. I apply elements of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to observational and interview data with patients, clinic workers, and community partners (n=32) in Chapulin County to illustrate how local and federal immigration policies have interacted synergistically with exclusionary health policies to trigger serious health consequences for immigrant individuals and families. Participants describe the challenges of balancing risks of illness and injury against the risks of detention, deportation, and family separation. I conclude that newly converging U.S. medical-legal bureaucracies have forced immigrant patients in Chapulin County to make agonizing decisions that often destabilize their own health and the wellbeing of their families.

Author

• Meredith Van Natta, Duke University